Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense: The Rosary Girls, the Skin Gods, Merciless, Badlands

by Richard Montanari

It was just after midnight. If this monster was telling the truth—and there was absolutely no reason to doubt him—they had less than two hours to save the first girl.

  III

  DEATH

  CLOCK

  In the cool of the night time

  The clocks pick off the points …

  —CARL SANDBURG, Interior

  | SIXTY-EIGHT |

  | 12 : 2 6 AM |

  TWENTY-TWO DETECTIVES FROM THE PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT’S homicide unit met in the briefing room on the first floor of the Roundhouse. They ranged in age from thirty-one to sixty-three, in experience from just a few months in the unit to more than thirty years. Eight of these detectives had been on duty for more than fourteen hours—including Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano. Six had been called from home. The other ten were already on last-out, but were no longer working cases or leads. Half of this raucous group had to be called in from the street.

  For these twenty-two men and women there was only one case at the moment.

  An unidentified man with four confirmed kills was threatening the lives of three other people; three females who investigators believed to be under the age of eighteen.

  They did not yet have ID on any of the potential victims.

  The whiteboard was divided into seven columns. From left to right:

  Elise Beausoleil. The Garden of Flowers.

  Monica Renzi. The Girl Without a Middle.

  Caitlin O’Riordan. The Drowning Girl.

  Katja Dovic. The Girl in the Sword Box.

  The next three columns were blank.

  AT 12:35 AM Captain Lee Chapman walked into the briefing room. A man stood next to him.

  “This is Mr. Arthur Lake,” Chapman said. “He is the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. He has graciously agreed to help us.”

  In his early sixties, Arthur Lake was well-dressed in a tan cotton blazer, dark chocolate slacks, polished loafers. His hair was a little long, a pewter gray. In addition to his duties at the IBM, he was an investment counselor at Wachovia.

  After the introductions were made, Byrne asked, “Have you seen the videos?”

  “I have,” Lake said. “I found them most disturbing.”

  He would get no argument from anyone in the room.

  “I’ll be happy to answer any and all questions you may have,” Lake added. “But I need to say something first.”

  “By all means, sir.”

  Lake took a moment. “My hope is that this … these events do not reflect on my profession, my community, or any of the people within it.”

  Byrne knew where the man was going. He understood. “I can assure you: no one in this room thinks that. No one in the department thinks that.”

  Lake nodded. He seemed a little more at ease. For the moment.

  “What can you tell us about what you’ve seen on these videos?” Byrne asked.

  “Two things, really,” Lake said. “One I think will help at this moment, the other I’m afraid will not.”

  “Good news first.”

  “Well, first off, I recognize all four illusions, of course. There’s nothing really different or exotic going on here. Blackstone’s Garden of Flowers, Houdini’s Water Torture Cell, or a variation on it, the Sword Box, the Girl Without a Middle. They’ve been known by different names, have had many variations over the years, but the effects are very similar. They are performed all over the world. From small cabarets and clubs to the biggest venues in Las Vegas.”

  “Do you recognize any of the devices?” Byrne asked. “What I mean by that is, do you know any of them by manufacturer?”

  “I’d have to see the videos a few more times to tell you that. Bear in mind, almost all of the larger stage illusions are manufactured by rather small specialty companies. As you might imagine, there is not a lot of call for them, so they are not mass produced. When you get into smaller devices—devices used for coin, card, and silk magic, the staples of close-up—the demand grows. Stage magic devices are quite often extremely sophisticated, manufactured to highly detailed blueprints and exacting specifications. They are made in relatively small wood and machine shops all over the world.”

  “Do any of these smaller manufacturers come to mind?” Byrne asked.

  Lake rattled off four or five names. Tony Park and Hell Rohmer immediately began Internet searches.

  “And the bad news?” Byrne asked.

  “The bad news is that I cannot identify the illusionist. At least not yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The world of magic is a vast but tightly knit network, Detective. In a short amount of time I can be in touch with magicians all over the world. There are hundreds of archivists in this network. If this person is or was a performer, someone will know him. In fact, there is a man here in Philadelphia who has one of the largest archives of Philadelphia magic history in the world.”

  “Is there a magician working today that has all of these illusions in one act?”

  Lake thought for a few moments. “No one comes to mind. Most of the well-known acts today are either full scale Vegas or television acts—David Blaine, Criss Angel, Lance Burton. On the stage, high-tech is the order of the day.”

  “What about the term ‘The Seven Wonders?’ ” Byrne asked. “Have you heard of this?”

  “The Seven Wonders does ring a bell, but I can’t place it. If it was an act, it was a small one.”

  “So, after seeing these four illusions, are you saying that there is no way you can predict what might be next? What the next three might be?”

  “I’m afraid not. I can make a list of other well-known illusions, but it would be many more than three. It would be in the dozens. Probably more.”

  Byrne nodded. “One more thing. He said ‘Here’s a clue. He flies between Begichev and Geltser.’ Do these names mean anything to anyone?”

  Everyone shook their heads, including Arthur Lake.

  “Any idea how to spell those names?” Tony Park asked.

  “No,” Byrne said.

  Park began to key in possibilities on the computer.

  “Let me make a few calls, send a few e-mails,” Lake said. “I’ll get you some answers. Is there somewhere I can do that?”

  “Absolutely,” Byrne said. “But are you sure you’ll be able to make contact at this hour?”

  Arthur Lake smiled. “Magicians tend to be creatures of the night.”

  Byrne nodded, glanced at Hell Rohmer, who shot to his feet.

  “Right this way, sir.”

  While Hell Rohmer led Lake to an office, Ike Buchanan stepped forward.

  Wiry and thin, gray-haired, he was now a thirty-five year veteran. He’d been wounded in the late seventies, a working-class kid who had clawed his way up to a command. He had more than once gone to bat for Jessica. She was both happy and saddened that Sgt. Dwight Buchanan was going to retire in less than a month. He could have coasted to the end, but here he was in the midst of battle, as always. He held in his hands an evidence bag. Inside was Monica Renzi’s necklace. Jessica wondered if this was Ike Buchanan’s Cheerio.

  He stood in front a large blowup map of North Philadelphia, specifically the area known as the Badlands.

  “I want ten detective teams on the street,” Buchanan said. He pinned ten pushpins on the map. “The first five teams will be deployed at the four corners of the Badlands—North Broad and Spring Garden, North Broad and Erie, Erie and Front Street, Front Street and Spring Garden, along with a team near Norris Square. The other five teams will ring the center.

  “If this is going down in East Division, I want gold badges at the scene in ninety seconds or less. Sector cars from the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth will be patrolling and monitoring J-Band. Detective Park and Sergeant Rohmer will work the computers. Any request for information should go directly to them. AV Unit will have eyes glued to the cams.”

  Buchanan scanned the sea of anxious faces, looking for questions, comm
ents. None came.

  “It looks like there are three girls in jeopardy out there,” he said. “They are our responsibility now. Find them. Find this man. Shut him down.”

  | SIXTY-NINE |

  | 12 : 46 AM |

  THE SOUNDS CAME TO HER IN WAVES. AT FIRST SHE THOUGHT IT WAS Rip. When her dog had been a puppy he got out of his small plaid bed every morning at dawn, parked himself at the foot of her bed, tail in motion, thumping the side of the box spring. If that didn’t wake her, he jumped onto her bed and positioned himself, paws out front, right by her ear. He wouldn’t bark, wouldn’t growl, wouldn’t whine, but the sound of his breathing—not to mention the aroma of puppy breath—would eventually wake her up.

  Lilly realized it wasn’t Rip. She wasn’t home.

  She was in Hell.

  The last thing she remembered was getting in the man’s car. He called his wife. Then there was a strong chemical smell, and everything went black. Had they been in an accident? She did a quick inventory of arms and limbs. She wasn’t hurt.

  Opening her eyes, the first thing she saw was a bronze chandelier hanging from some sort of plaster medallion on the ceiling. She was in a bed, covered with a white down comforter. The room was dim and hot. It felt like night. She threw off the covers, tried to sit up. Her head felt ready to fall off. She lay back down, and it all came back to her. He had drugged her somehow. She had trusted him, and he had drugged her. She felt the nausea rise in her throat, but battled it back.

  She looked around the room, gauging distances, heights. The two windows were both covered in dark green drapes. There were also two doors. One had locks. The other must be a closet. There was a dresser with a mirror, two nightstands, one lamp. A big painting on the wall. That was it.

  She was about to try sitting up once again when she heard quick-moving footsteps outside the door. She pulled the comforter up to her neck, half-closed her eyes.

  Keys turned in the locks. Moments later, he entered the room, turned on a lamp. It cast the room in a warm ginger glow. Lilly did not stir. She wanted him to think she was still out of it.

  When his back was to her, she risked opening her eyes. She watched him fuss and straighten things—the vase on the dresser, the hem of the down comforter, the pleats of the drapes. He adjusted the painting for what seemed like the dozenth time. She wanted to jump from the bed, claw his fucking eyes out, but she was far too weak to try anything at the moment. She needed a clear head. She needed to think straight. She might only get one shot.

  She kept her breathing slow and steady, her eyes almost completely shut. He stood at the foot of the bed for the longest time, just watching her. It was so quiet she could hear her heartbeat in the down pillow.

  After a few minutes, he checked his appearance in the mirror, opened the door, stepped through, and closed it. Lilly heard a key turn in a lock, then a second key. Footsteps padding down the hall.

  Then, silence.

  | SEVENTY |

  | 12 : 59 AM |

  PEOPLE LINED THE STREETS OF NORTH PHILLY. RAIN WAS INTERMITTENT, mosquitoes swarmed in dense clouds, music played on car stereos, blunts were cupped and hidden. Those gathered on Broad Street, some with binoculars in hand, would every so often point at the bright red clock face on the City Hall tower. What next, Philly?

  The story had been splashed across all the local television stations, starting with a break-in during the late-night talk shows. Two stations had set up three cameras each, with a live feed to their websites. Every so often there would be a cutaway shot to the red clock on the tower at City Hall. It was like a demented version of New Year’s Eve with Dick Clark.

  Jessica was always amazed at how fast the media got the down and dirty on things. She wondered how glib and hip these reporters and announcers would be if it were their daughters out there in the hands of a vicious psychopath, just how willing they would be then to play their stupid and dangerous ratings games.

  They drove north on Fifth Street, past Callowhill and Spring Garden, past Fairmount, Poplar, and Girard. Jessica scanned the corners, the faces, the hands.

  Was he among them? Was their killer standing on a street corner, blending into the urban canvas, awaiting the precise moment for his next play? Had he already made his play, and was simply planning his reveal? And if this was the case, how was he going to let them know?

  A representative of the mayor’s office, along with the police commissioner, the chief inspector of the homicide unit, and the district attorney herself had met in an emergency session at the Roundhouse, discussing, first and foremost, the advisability of shutting down power to the clock. A technician was standing by at City Hall, waiting for word.

  Until the girls were found, the consensus was to leave the clock alone. If this madman was in North Philadelphia, and he could see the tower, there was no telling what horrors might be triggered if his plan went awry.

  However, there had yet to be any indication that he wanted anything—other than an audience. There had been no demands for ransom, no demands for acquiescence of any kind. Until there was, or until he was identified, there could be no avenue of negotiation.

  This was certainly not about money. It was about a compulsive murderer plying his terrible craft.

  Security at City Hall had been tripled. SWAT had been deployed, the bomb unit was standing by. K-9 officers and their dogs were in the process of walking every square inch of the building. It was a large task. There were more than 700 rooms at City Hall. Traffic was rerouted on both Broad and Market streets. A police helicopter, one of three headquartered at Northeast Philadelphia Airport, was being prepped, manned, and scrambled.

  Initial reports stated that it appeared the intruder had gained access to the clock tower by picking a lock on the access door on the forty-fourth floor. His method of deploying the red face on the clock was a series of red acetate panels connected to a small electric motor, triggered by a wireless transmitter. There was no telling how long the mechanism had been in place, although a longtime City Hall employee—a woman named Antoinette Ruolo—had phoned the police when she saw the news story break, offering a description of a man she said might have stayed behind on one of her tours the previous Friday afternoon. Police artists were in the process of putting together a composite based on her description.

  There was still no word from the FBI’s Computer Crimes Task Force.

  THEY CONTINUED NORTH on Fifth Street until they reached Cumberland, where they pulled over. Whereas all of the patrol cars in the PPD were equipped with laptop computers, the detective cars were not. Before leaving the Roundhouse, Jessica ran down to the AV Unit and grabbed their highest-tech laptop. As they began their search of North Philadelphia, she fired up the computer, opening all the programs she thought they might need to use, then minimized them. Thankfully, the battery was fully charged.

  Getting online was another story. Philadelphia did not yet have citywide wi-fi, but there were hotspots all over town.

  JESSICA AND BYRNE got out of the car. Byrne took off his tie and jacket, rolled up his sleeves. Jessica doffed her blazer. A few calls went out over police radio. One was a domestic disturbance in Juniata. Another a possible carjacking on Third. Crime goes on.

  “This is maddening,” Jessica said. “This is absolutely fucking maddening.”

  Inside the car, Byrne dug around in the backseat, emerging with a large SEPTA map of Philadelphia. He spread it across the hood of the vehicle.

  “Okay. Caitlin O’Riordan was here.” He circled the area on North Eighth Street where Caitlin’s body had been found. “Monica Renzi.” He circled Shiloh Street. “Katja Dovic.” Ninth Street. “Elise Beausoleil.” Cambria. “What’s the relationship between these scenes? Not the killings. But the crime scenes.”

  Jessica had been staring at these map locations for days. Nothing clicked. “We need to see this from above,” she said.

  “Can we get a wi-fi signal here?”

  Jessica took the laptop out of the car, opened it, launc
hed a web browser. She clicked on a bookmark. It was slow, but it came in. “Yeah,” she said. “We’re hot.”

  Byrne got on the phone to Hell Rohmer.

  “Can you send us a graphic of the overhead map of North Philly?”

  “All of North Philly?”

  “No,” Byrne said. “Just isolate the areas where the victims were found. I want a good look at all the buildings together.”

  “You got it. Two minutes.”

  Byrne clicked off. They watched the streets. They scanned the channels. They paced. They waited.

  | SEVENTY-ONE |

  | 1 : 11 AM |

  SWANN KNEW LILLY HAD BEEN AWAKE. HE ALWAYS KNEW. IT WAS A GAME he had often played himself as a child. His father would have his small conclaves at Faerwood, finding himself in need of a foil or an object of ridicule at two and three and four in the morning. Swann had even studied techniques—mostly of Eastern origin—to slow down one’s breath and pulse to further the outward appearance of sleep, coma, or even death.

  He fingered the goatee into place, held it, the smell of the spirit gum drawing him back to his childhood. He recalled a small club near Boston, 1978. The dressing room chair had tape on one leg. There were crumpled McDonald’s bags in the corner. His father played to an audience of ten people.

  Swann tied his tie, put on an older raincoat. After all, he could not be glimpsed in North Philadelphia looking like the master of ceremonies at a bizarre gathering of aging conjurers.

  He flipped off the makeup mirror lights. The lights slowly died, as did the memories.

  THE VAN SAT waiting for him in the garage. In the back was Patricia Sato, his lovely Odette. She was the girl in the Sub Trunk. He had built it to exacting specs. There was no air inside.

  Moments later, observing all traffic laws, Joseph Swann—also known as the Collector—drove to the Badlands.

  | SEVENTY-TWO |

  | 1 : 19 AM |